Santa Cruz Island
We had a wonderful day in the land of the giant tortoises. Santa Cruz Island opened our eyes to a beautiful array of lots and lots of fun and interesting new things to learn.
We disembarked at the happy little town of Puerto Ayora. The weather accompanied us well, as it was a little overcast – good for walking around.
Once our naturalists taught us at the Rearing Center about the efforts that the Galápagos National Park Service and the CDF have been doing for 50 years to restore the dynasty of the giant tortoises all around the archipelago, we went through the town for great shopping.
At eleven we took buses that rode us to the highlands of Santa Cruz. Some of us biked up to a nice restaurant full of greenery with a great swimming pool and some others had a nice walk to it. Our younger explorers played an interesting volleyball match at the volleyball court they had there.
After a delicious and well deserved lunch, we spent the afternoon walking among wild giant old male land tortoises. We visited a lava tunnel where a barn owl was nesting, we saw a vermillion flycatcher which was too fast to be photographed and at the end of the walk we were served with free coffee and lemongrass tea locally grown.
It was certainly a great day to learn about the emblem of the Galápagos Islands: the giant land tortoises.
